


sympathy, at best

by v3ilfire



Series: let the stars watch, let them stare [1]
Category: Pyre (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, some friendship shenanigans and a little pre-relationship intrigue, we'll get to something more exciting someday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-16 04:56:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11821674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/v3ilfire/pseuds/v3ilfire
Summary: The flashback had taken Reader from reality just long enough for her to not notice that Jodariel had moved until she was already looming over her. She extended a hand to help her up, which was an odd gesture considering that neither woman held any illusion about the fact that the leg wasn’t exactly at fault for Reader’s absence at the campfire.“You have already suffered the worst of it. No harm will come to you,” Jodariel said. The way she lowered her voice caught Reader a little off-guard; she had expected a level of forced sympathy at best (pity at worst), but there was something genuine there that stuck.





	sympathy, at best

**Author's Note:**

> i gotta build this up guys and im not sorry. or maybe i am. who knows. back to shorter format. reader's got a wooden leg fashioned after a bird's. shenanigans.

It had taken a regrettable amount of effort, but Reader managed to sit herself in the blackwagon’s doorframe, wooden leg resting against its lowered steps and its fleshy counterpart bent to her chest; poised to keep one eye on the sleeping bard and another on the trio by the fire. Thankfully they had all gotten used to her cold, watchful stare and went about their business as they had for the past week, chattering amicably amongst themselves while Hedwyn tried to cook… something out of… other things. The first three days Reader ended up throwing his experiments right back up as her body was equal parts frail from the trip downriver and utterly confused about what was being used to nourish it.

Despite her sour disposition and the Downside’s desire to starve her, Reader had to admit that the boy’s culinary creativity was almost as admirable as his optimism. When he wasn’t busy stirring a passing-for-edible stew, he would lobby questions her way and try to pull her into the conversation. She never answered them, of course, still busy sizing up the ones who thrust a book into her hands and took her in based only on her ability to interpret it, but she’d be lying if she insisted that he wasn’t wearing on her defenses a little.

Still, Reader was happy to keep her distance. They were still a day away from the site of the first Rite; she needed to go through that first, she needed to see what these Nightwings were like when they were presented with something they wanted, what would happen if what they asked was beyond her means, and what would happen if she had to refuse. That would be when she’d decide if the worst-case scenario is staying, or running off in the dead of night with nothing but a limp and a prayer.

As if to spite her desire to hide in shadow, a cool breeze brushed past Reader and forced a strange combination of a shiver and sneeze clean out of her. She hoped it would go unnoticed, but when the stars clerared from her eyes she met Jodariel’s equally steely stare. It was the Rukey that decided to comment, though.  
“A little chilly there, chum?”  
“My friend,” Hedwyn said, “why don’t you join us by the fire? Dinner is almost ready.”

Reader turned her gaze back to a crack in the doorframe in silent rejection. She hoped that conversation would move on around her as it always did, but it seemed that her luck in such matters was starting to run out.

“That leg,” Jodariel said, staring at the wooden crow’s leg dangling over the stairs. “It isn’t meant to be walked on.” The observation was… not entirely inaccurate, if a little uncomfortable to have lingering in the open. The truth was that it wasn’t meant to be walked on _for long_ , though running was a whole other nightmare. She’d only made it a few minutes trying to escape the Commonwealth militia before they found her sprawled on the ground, clutching her knee.

Her biggest regret was not being able to walk to her own sentencing after that without the aid of one of the guards.

The flashback had taken Reader from reality just long enough for her to not notice that Jodariel had moved until she was already looming over her. She extended a hand to help her up, which was an odd gesture considering that neither woman held any illusion about the fact that the leg wasn’t exactly at fault for Reader’s absence at the campfire.  
“You have already suffered the worst of it. No harm will come to you,” Jodariel said. The way she lowered her voice caught Reader a little off-guard; she had expected a level of forced sympathy at best (pity at worst), but there was something genuine there that stuck.  
“You already know I can’t run away.”  
“What I said was not meant as a threat.”  
“So why not just leave me be?”  
“Because you are one of us now.”

Reader stared at Jodariel like she was trying to divinate the next 48 hours from the curl in her horns or the calluses on her insistent palm. “You don’t know me,” she offered as her final line of defense. Kindness only made her more nervous, though that was less of a survival instinct and more an unfortunate side-effect of having isolated herself from her peers for several years.  
“Hedwyn has been trying,” Jodariel responded. Again, her observation was not inaccurate.

By all accounts it seemed that Reader had lost this argument, but if she would be forced to join the party, she would do so by her own means. She swung her good leg over the edge of the blackwagon and lowered herself as gently as she could onto the ground and brushed past Jodariel on her way forward. She made it two steps before her foot caught a raised root that her eyes hadn’t, and just as she was certain that  her face was about to get up close and personal with the flora of the Downside, Jodariel caught her elbow and pulled her upright.

There was a strange moment in which Reader knew that yanking her arm away would cross the line between quiet defiance and the kind of ungrateful rudeness that would most likely summon her mother from the afterlife to set her right, but she was seemingly robbed of any other thought. In the absence of a plan she went rigid, too aware of Jodariel’s every move as she stepped over the culprit raised root and gently tried to guide Reader forward.

Reader stepped, tentatively, onto more even ground, uttering a quiet _thank-you_ as soon as her brain began to work again. To her relief Jodariel let go as soon as they crossed closer to the light, and she was free to walk forward and sit on the very edge of the bench that had been set out without further mishaps. Hedwyn was grinning ear-to-ear and already ladling his improvised soup into chipped bowls.  
“Good to see you finally join us.”  
“Took you long enough,” Rukey added, though his bluntness felt more like a ribbing than an insult. Frankly, Reader had no idea what to do with their encroaching familiarity, considering she’d been all but ignoring their presence for the last several days.

Hedwyn handed her the first bowl of soup… slop, and she thanked him in the same uncharacteristically stilted manner than she had used just a few moments ago. To think anyone ever paid her to be an orator was starting to feel like a distant dream.  
“Does your leg bother you much, my friend?” Hedwyn asked.

Reader’s stomach dropped. Her glance turned scrutinizing again when she brought it up from the piping bowl in her lap, but all she saw was an earnestness that she usually only saw in her younger students, not the malice of a veiled threat.

“Leave her be,” Jodariel sighed, taking a seat across the fire. The comment was more for his sake than for Reader’s comfort, but as long as it ended the line of questioning it made little difference. Hedwyn half-shrugged in her direction as he set another bowl in front of Rukey.

Reader held her bowl until all were served, and ate in silence. As per usual, Hedwyn left enough in the pot for the bard in the wagon, in case he chose to wake and grace them with his presence. She always knew he did that, but it never quite stuck until she saw the portion actually sitting in the pot, continuing to warm. Uneaten by a man who she would have mistaken for a corpse if he did not occasionally stir or sigh in his sleep. 

Scribes. She was getting soft if the sight of soup was enough to get a reaction out of her.

“No,” Reader answered belatedly. All eyes turned to her and she considered throwing herself into the fire. “The leg. It doesn’t bother me.” Without missing a beat, Rukey looked up from his food long enough to offer yet another snide comment.  
“Is that why you almost fell on your face back there? Could’ve fooled me.”  
“I always got scolded for not picking up my feet,” she admitted. The story about her mother joking that she lost her leg as a punishment for her infernal scuffling was on the tip of her tongue, but she kept it there. She’d shared enough, for the moment.  
Hedwyn beamed at her again. “Well, Jodi and I are always here to help. You need only ask.”

Reader summoned a satisfactory half-smile, which she then turned to Jodariel and found herself momentarily taken aback by an expression she had never seen the woman make before. It was a smile far too soft for a hardened exile and it made Reader almost _painfully_ curious about -- something.

She returned her gaze promptly to her soup. She needed one more day.


End file.
